Hell Train (30 page)

As the leader of the Satanists who built the train, the Controller presented a grand figure. He was older and vastly more dissipated now, but his appearance still filled Isabella with childhood terror.

‘Hello, Uncle. I need to speak to you,’ said Isabella, trying to control the quaver in her voice.

The Controller admired her form. In her borrowed gown she appeared transformed, grown up and beautiful. He studied her and sighed. ‘Well well well, my little Isabella. You, of all people. Why must there always be a virgin?’

‘I don’t belong here, sir. And this man—well, he’s not perfect, but he doesn’t deserve to go to Hell.’

‘But you will. Especially you. The virgins always go.’ He checked his watch. ‘I don’t like the idea of you being abducted by a foreigner, going off and leaving the family without sons for the foundry. I was most surprised to hear you had boarded the
Arkangel
. The Conductor tried to tell me he had lured you here, but I think he was trying to make the best of the situation. Running away, though, it’s not very loyal of you.’

‘You disappeared when I was six.’

‘I began my indenture to the
Dark Angel
. I followed my duty.’

‘The sign above our inn had a painting of a sacrificed virgin. But that was standing long before the foundry was built.’

‘Indeed it was, because there have always been rituals in our town, sacrifices to ripen the wheat, sacrifices to make the fruit trees abundant, sacrifices so that the midwives would bring more boys than girls. You should know that. Our family was involved in all of them.’

‘So the building of the train—’

‘—was the next logical step. We’ll be arriving very shortly, my dear. A little behind schedule, but that can’t be helped. There’s nothing you can do to stop the
Dark Angel
now, I’m afraid.’

‘But I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘It’s too late. Those who come this close to our final destination are doomed to stay on board forever.’

Anger replaced Isabella’s fear. ‘That’s cheating!’

‘What did you expect? Enjoy these last few moments. Let me look at you in this form, one last time. You were always my favourite niece. I never imagined you would grow up to be so beautiful. Come—have a drink with me.’ He took her arm, leading her into the dining car.

‘Is that it?’ called Nicholas. ‘Is that your big plan? We’re about to burn for all eternity and you’re going for
cocktails?’
Disgusted, he turned and punched a coal merchant in the face.

Isabella and the Controller sat opposite each other. He pawed at her hand, a cat playing with a new toy. Outside, the sky was flickering with streaks of vermilion. Every few seconds the horizon erupted.

‘We are approaching the final stop. I envy you, Isabella. The terrors you’ve experienced on this journey are nothing compared to those that await you. Don’t be sad. All our passengers fail. We are only human, are we not?’ He checked his pocket watch as it began to chime.

‘Only human. So you are human too.’

‘Yes, the only living human allowed to stay aboard the
Dark Angel
for each of its journeys between life and the underworld. I built it, after all.’

‘But you must stay on board for eternity.’

‘That was my end of the bargain. It’s not such a hardship. Every voyage is different. No two passengers are ever alike. You’d be surprised what fun we have.’

‘Then if I too have failed, I must accept my fate.’

Nicholas was watching through the carriage window, outraged. ‘What? You’re giving in, just like that?’ he bellowed. ‘You’re the only one who could have saved me! Well, thanks a lot, Little Miss Virgin!’

Behind him, the dead passengers advanced once more. One soulless soldier reached out and dug bony white fingers into his shoulder.

‘Join us...’

‘And you can clear off, for a start.’ Nicholas punched him in the eyes.

But he had a fight on his hands, holding back the damned while Isabella flirted with the corrupt Controller.

Outside, the sky was fully afire. The train was gathering speed, preparing for its arrival in the land of eternal torment. And although Nicholas fought back as bravely as he could, he knew in his heart that the real battle had been fought and lost.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

THE CATACLYSM

N
ICHOLAS HAD FIRED
his first rifle in Algiers after being chased from an illegal camel race by a pair of angry Spanish gamblers, and the trenches had taught him rougher manners. Confronting the fears that had driven him from his comrades had brought fresh courage. Tearing a machete from the hands of a befuddled fieldworker, he wielded the dull, heavy blade against the heads of the attacking horde, splitting a considerable number of soulless skulls before it was finally pulled from his grasp. Soon the carriage was awash with gore, and his right arm was aching.

Even though he had been pinned through the eyes with swords, the Conductor was determined to make his announcements. ‘We will shortly be arriving in Hell,’ he called. ‘The train terminates here. All change. Please remember to take all your belongings with you.’

And inside the Controller’s apartment, seated opposite the grand Satanist himself, Isabella cast down her eyes, contrite.

‘I could not imagine that I would be a match for you and your train,’ she said sadly.

The Controller raised his wineglass to her. ‘Don’t feel bad, my sweet child. I hope you take it as a consolation when I tell you that you got further than anyone else has in years. Take a look out of the window and tell me what you see.’

Looking through the glass, she watched a scene that would have made Hieronymus Bosch feel sick. Here and there, groups of men could be faintly discerned, employed in pointless, impossible tasks; the rolling uphill of a giant eyeball, the lowering into a pit of an immense ear, soaring tangles of absurdly complex machinery operated by hundreds, designed to cut a grape in half or tear the petals from a rose, men climbing human pyramids to redirect the stars or change the shapes of lightning bolts, and all the while a screaming, singing cacophony of voices, a reek of burning flesh, a sting of brimstone, a corrupt hint of perfume, a sense of all things spoiled, betrayed, poisoned and unforgiven.

‘This is the Hell you expected, yes?’ said the Controller. ‘Suppose I was to tell you that it is not Hell at all?’

‘It hurts my eyes to look upon it,’ Isabella admitted. ‘What do you mean, it is not Hell?’

‘This is what your church would have you believe awaits poor sinners. Such images adorn the walls and windows of your places of worship, to frighten you into belief and obedience. But the underworld does not exist in any single frame of time. It flows continuously back and forth. And it is not a great land of fires and tortures. Let me show you the real Hell.’

He wiped his hand across the window and the landscape fell away, to be replaced by blank, silent blackness. ‘Hell exists in no geographical landscape. It cannot be found with compasses. I will show you where Hell is.’ He raised his index finger and touched his forehead. ‘It is inside here, and only you control it. Hell is the sum of your greatest fears. The most precious gift of life is the acknowledgement of your existence. Hell has no memory and nothing to offer except the thought that nobody ever cared about you, or ever will. Hell is an absence, the Hell of men and women who are utterly indifferent.
L’Enfer, c’est les autres.
’

‘Why would people dream of Hell?’ Isabella demanded to know. ‘We want what is good. We don’t wish to suffer.’

‘Bless you for your naivety, my little one. How little you know of the world. I only tell you this because you are family. And I would be proud to have you in the family business. Here, have your fantasies of Hell back.’ He passed his hand across the window and the fiery landscape returned.

‘The family business.’ Isabella turned the thought over.

‘Don’t do it!’ Nicholas shouted, hammering on the window.

‘You would really have me?’ Isabella asked, a smile touching her lips.

‘Oh, yes,’ said the Controller.

‘Your proposal is something to celebrate.’

‘I hoped you might see it that way.’

‘I suggest a toast.’ She held her glass high.

‘You’re a good sport. To your youth. And to your innocence.’

The Controller drank noisily. Then he stared at her. A sudden look of unpleasant surprise crossed his features.

‘It’s true,’ Isabella admitted, ‘I’m young and have not travelled before. But I’m not that innocent.’

The Controller appeared to be choking. He opened his mouth and found a pulsing white egg sac on his tongue. Isabella had slipped one of the eggs from
Coleoptera Freely
into his red wine.

‘Try taking your own test,’ she said, slamming his jaw shut with her fist and making him swallow.

The Controller began to cough and shake. His sweating jowls and stomach wobbled. There was a pop as the egg sac burst open and new-born beetles invaded his guts. Moments later, the hungry new bugs found the softest channels of escape, burrowing out through his eyes and back again, noisily eating his brain.

The Controller screamed as his head was devoured from the inside. The beetles burst out of his ears and took flight, heading into the corridor, and his headless body fell forward in a spectacular spray of gore, demolishing a bone china tureen filled with pork chops.

Without a controlling influence, the
Dark Angel
began to shake itself apart. The walls around Isabella strained and creaked. Steel screamed and timber tore. Isabella rose and ran outside, where Nicholas was fending off a pair of dead blacksmiths with a broom.

The windows exploded in splinters of glass. Pinned by his eyes, the Conductor’s body swung back and forth. ‘All change! All change!’ he managed to scream before his head came off.

The floor was buckling as the undercarriage began to break loose and the great wheels bounced about, unmoored. Sparks sprayed all around them. The walls split, and part of the roof was ripped away. The
Arkangel
was breaking up faster than a ship hitting an iceberg.

The undead passengers were thrown into a panic and all began to scream. The noise was appalling. The great train lurched and fell like a roller coaster.

Isabella screamed.

Nicholas yelled.

Everybody shrieked.

With its Conductor speared and its Controller beheaded, the
Dark Angel
fell back on the tracks, hammered over points and over a vast wooden viaduct, shedding its carriages as it went. Each was whipped away from the last as it dropped toward the empty, soundless void below, a Hell far more frightening because it offered nothing at all, the Hell of non-existence.

The remaining carriages were tearing themselves to pieces. Isabella clung to Nicholas, recited the Lord’s Prayer and closed her eyes, hanging on for dear life.

With a final boost of speed, the
Dark Angel
left the tracks and hurtled toward the end of the line.

Ahead stood a vast dark terminus, black against black, almost invisible. Beyond them a wall of sound was rising, a cry of terror so dense and discordant that it seemed like one great voice. It broke over the train in waves, splintering into individual human cries, pleading, panicked, fearful, the voices of those who would do anything at all in order to draw one more breath. It was the sound of Hell’s damned, begging to be forgiven for their foolish, sorry, wasted lives.

Isabella opened her eyes and looked upon the mouth of Hades.

The terminus glowed with a million crimson pinprick fires, a vast dark landscape animated in hallucinatory hues. It was the antithesis of a starscape, the universe in reverse.

The buffers and the siding roared up to the train and smashed over it with a thunderous roar.

The
Dark Angel
ploughed right through, hurtling across the precipice. Isabella felt the cataclysm shake her bones, and saw the explosion as if from a great distance, as a volcanic flare in the night sky. The deafening grind of metal reverberated through the blackened countryside. The train sounded like a great dying beast.

And finally, all was quiet.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

THE GAME

T
HROUGH BLASTS OF
steam and acrid coal-smoke Nicholas saw the nightmare vision roll back and fade like a scene fragmented by migraine.

When he was finally able to raise his head once more and look from the window, all that remained was the empty plain, the ancient meadowlands, and the approaching forest of silver birches. The sky was clear and cornflower blue. He reached down and touched his breastbone, pushing his fingers beneath the rags of his blood-soaked shirt. There was no wound.

He watched Isabella sleep on until sunlight dappled her cheeks, causing her eyelids to flutter. The train was still rocking and swaying, but gently now.

It was dawn, and they were coming into a station. There were buckets of primroses on the platform. The sky was growing brighter by the second.

The
Dark Angel
now looked like a rather shabby old train, brought out of engine-shed retirement for one last spin around the map. She had finally come home, to the place where she had been built.

Isabella yawned and sat up, looking about herself. She stretched and climbed to her feet, opening a window, letting the breeze caress her. Shafts of sunlight fell all around.

Beside her, Nicholas flexed his aching arms and rose. Squinting and shielding his eyes, he peered out into the brilliant sunshine. The train now looked like any other, patched and tired, grey with dust, its empty corridors scoured with overuse.

Outside, everything was blue and yellow. Isabella opened the carriage door and stepped blinking into the light. She took stock of her surroundings and liked what she saw. The army had left the town. The platform was covered with flowers. She was home. Back in Chelmsk, where her father and friends were waiting to welcome her.

Josef approached her shyly and took her in his arms, holding her safe. The men were different versions of themselves now—the good people they should have been, if the foundry had never allowed the committee to conduct its Satanic ritual.